Competitive bake-off
Cover vs
Season 2, same 18 PDFs: Cover caught 100% of 149 private details, 0 leaked, 12 over-redacted, 3.2 s per PDF. Apple Intelligence caught 50%, 76 leaked, 129 over-redacted, 4.6 s per PDF. Of 12 engines ranked by mistakes (leaked private details weigh most, and over-redactions count too), Apple Intelligence places 8th and Cover 1st.
Sending PDFs with private identity information to a cloud Ai like Claude or ChatGPT is a bad idea. But could a local Ai on your own computer redact them instead? This bake-off runs Cover’s engine and the leading local Ai engines on the same 18 bank, tax and medical PDFs. So far the local Ai engines fall behind Cover in three ways: they over-redact, most are slow, and none offer a fast way to fix their mistakes.
Seasons
Season 2 · 18 PDFs · 149 private details (PII)
PDF selection focuses on money, home and insurance documents. Real-world samples for anyone asking Ai about their own money, or accountants and tax pros who redact a client's documents before asking Ai for a second opinion. Watch Cover's engine improve with each release, even outpacing Google's tech.
- Money 9
- Home 5
- Health & insurance 3
- Taxes 1
Engine quality over time
Local redaction landscape
| # | engine | PII accuracy | Over-redaction | Speed |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 🥇 Cover | Excellent | Very good | Excellent |
| 2 | 🥈 Gemma 4Google | Very good | Very poor | Good |
| 3 | 🥉 Phi-4Microsoft | Good | Very poor | Poor |
| 4 | Qwen 3Alibaba | Good | Very poor | Very poor |
| 5 | Qwen 2.5Alibaba | Poor | Very poor | Good |
| 6 | DeepSeek R1DeepSeek | Poor | Very poor | Very poor |
| 7 | Llama 3.1Meta | Poor | Very poor | Good |
| 8 | Apple IntelligenceApple | Very poor | Very poor | Excellent |
| 9 | Gemma 3Google | Poor | Very poor | Good |
| 10 | Privacy FilterOpenAI | Poor | Very poor | Very good |
| 11 | RampartAmerica.gov | Very poor | Very poor | Excellent |
| 12 | NemotronOpenMed | Very poor | Very poor | Excellent |
Per-page side-by-sides
Check out the actual pages below and how each engine redacted them, side by side with the original.
Red outline: private detail left visibleBlue outline: over-redaction
8th place
Worth flagging
Apple Intelligence
Built into the Mac with nothing to install, yet it catches only 51% of the private details and leaves 74 visible.The only candidate that needs zero install and keeps everything on the Mac, which is the reason it is worth watching at all. On redaction it catches only about half of the PII (51%), ahead of just two other engines. Its small context limit makes it give up on dense pages and return nothing at all on several, which is also why its over-redaction count looks middling: a page it never answered cannot be wrongly redacted. It is slow, and like the other generative models it gives no way to click a box and fix what it gets wrong, while Cover does both in seconds.
Cover’s edge
Holds even if a model matches Cover’s accuracy.
- One-click edits fix any box instantly; no re-prompting (LLMs over-redact).
- Fully offline files never leave your device.
- Seconds per file no datacenter hardware to buy or maintain.
2025_Tax_Return_Okafor-Brennan.pdf
Page 1Cover wins
Page 2Cover wins
Page 3Cover wins
Page 4Cover wins
Page 5Cover wins
Page 7Cover wins
Page 8Tie
Page 9Cover wins
WellsFargo-sample-statement.pdf
Page 1Cover wins
Page 2Tie
capitalone-sample-estatement.pdf
Page 1Tie
commercebank-sample-statement.pdf
Page 1Cover wins
Fidelity-sample-statement.pdf
Page 1Cover wins
Page 2Cover wins
Page 4Cover wins
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Page 9Tie
Page 10Cover wins
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Page 28Apple Intelligence wins
fidelity-large-print-sample-statement.pdf
Page 1Cover wins
Page 3Tie
pershing-2024-sample-tax-yearend.pdf
Page 1Cover wins
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ubs-portfolio-summary-sample.pdf
Page 1Cover wins
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Page 22Tie
cfpb-sample-credit-card-statement-handout.pdf
Page 1Cover wins
allstate-auto-declarations-sample.pdf
Page 1Tie
Page 2Cover wins
cfpb-ficus-bank-loan-estimate-sample.pdf
Page 1Tie
Page 2Cover wins
Page 3Cover wins
cigna-eob-example.pdf
Page 1Cover wins
Page 2Cover wins
medicare-sample-part-b-msn.pdf
Page 2Cover wins
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cfpb-draft-periodic-mortgage-statement.pdf
Page 1Cover wins
Lease_Agreement_signed.pdf
Page 1Cover wins
transunion-cameo-credit-report-sample.pdf
Page 1Cover wins
Page 2Cover wins
Page 3Tie
Page 4Tie
Page 5Tie
Page 6Cover wins
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Page 9Cover wins
Page 10Tie
att-uverse-sample-bill.pdf
Page 1Cover wins
Page 2Cover wins
Page 3Cover wins
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pge-sample-bill-sparky-joule.pdf
Page 1Apple Intelligence wins
Page 2Cover wins
Page 3Tie
Page 4Tie
Page 5Tie
Page 6Cover wins
Full results
Cover v1.0.2 vs Apple Intelligence SystemLanguageModel · macOS 27.0-26A428 · 18 real-world sample documents.
| metric · all 18 docs | Cover | Apple Intelligence |
|---|---|---|
| Recall: PII correctly redacted | 100% | 50% |
| Leaks: confirmed PII left visible | 0 | 76 |
| Over-redaction: non-PII redacted by mistake | 12 | 129 |
| Speed: median time per PDF | ~3.2 sec/PDF | ~4.6 sec/PDF |
Per-document breakdown: all 18 docs (one outlier can dominate the totals)
| document | Cover leaks | Apple Intelligence leaks | Cover over | Apple Intelligence over |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ubs-portfolio-summary-sample | 0 | 3 | 0 | 39 |
| transunion-cameo-credit-report-sample | 0 | 6 | 0 | 34 |
| att-uverse-sample-bill | 0 | 3 | 0 | 22 |
| Fidelity-sample-statement | 0 | 9 | 2 | 10 |
| 2025_Tax_Return_Okafor-Brennan | 0 | 8 | 0 | 6 |
| pershing-2024-sample-tax-yearend | 0 | 7 | 0 | 5 |
| cigna-eob-example | 0 | 7 | 0 | 4 |
| commercebank-sample-statement | 0 | 0 | 3 | 4 |
| WellsFargo-sample-statement | 0 | 8 | 2 | 2 |
| cfpb-sample-credit-card-statement-handout | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| medicare-sample-part-b-msn | 0 | 2 | 4 | 1 |
| pge-sample-bill-sparky-joule | 0 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| Lease_Agreement_signed | 0 | 10 | 0 | 0 |
| allstate-auto-declarations-sample | 0 | 3 | 0 | 0 |
| capitalone-sample-estatement | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| cfpb-draft-periodic-mortgage-statement | 0 | 4 | 0 | 0 |
| cfpb-ficus-bank-loan-estimate-sample | 0 | 2 | 0 | 0 |
| fidelity-large-print-sample-statement | 0 | 3 | 0 | 0 |
| TOTAL | 0 | 76 | 12 | 129 |
How the test works
Test set: 18 public sample documents (149 verified PII items), held fixed across runs so results stay comparable. Every engine redacted the same documents; each output is scored against a Claude-authored gold standard (confirmed + ambiguous tiers), and every counted over-redaction is kept auditable. Pages and the leaderboard use the same weighting: leaked private details weigh most, and over-redactions count too.